Wolves are extremely effective vectors of over 30 diseases and infections of great danger to humans, wildlife and domestic animals.

Wolves are deadly threats to rural children, elderly (women in particular) and adults as when rabid. Asian, European and North American history and current events confirm this routinely.

If Colorado residents choose to introduce or tolerate wolves, Counties should retain the final decision for Local elected officials to decide whether or how wolves are to be controlled, tolerated or exterminated in their County. Local officials are the most responsive to those local residents that would live with wolves and their very many social, biological and economic ill effects.

Jim Beers

15 February 2016

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Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow. He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC. He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC. He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority. He resides in Eagan, Minnesota with his wife of many decades.

Jim Beers is available to speak or for consulting. You can receive future articles by sending a request with your e-mail address to: jimbeers7@comcast.net

*Editor’s Note* – I’ve highlight the most relevant part of any discussion involving the spreading of GI toxic wolves across the entire landscape of the United States. We live in a fascist state where the Federal Government dictates to everyone what will be. Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and any other state can oppose wolf introduction and be damned. We operate in a rigged system of totalitarians. Expect wolves and disease on every doorstep in America once the fascists are through.

It amazes me how this corrupt government is all concerned about following the letter of the law…when it’s convenient for them and promotes their fascist regime. When it doesn’t they piss on the rule of law.

Federal officials declined to comment. They’re not required to seek state blessings as they develop a Mexican wolf recovery plan by the end of 2017 to prevent extinction.

In both Massachusetts and Colorado, there are some new developments regarding bears that is timely and noteworthy.

In Colorado, black bears numbers are going through the roof.

…in Massachusetts, booming bear numbers, even close to urban areas, have forced the state this fall to declare a new statewide bear hunt, in fact three separate seasons, September, November and December! According to South Shore outdoor writer Randy Julius, his state’s bear numbers are on the rise significantly.

A plan that will close nearly 2,000 miles of public roads that have previously been open for use by the people of Mesa County is creating a public backlash against the Grand Junction field office of the federal Bureau of Land Management.

“Colorado has some of the best elk hunting and elk habitat in the United States,” said David Allen, RMEF president and CEO. “These thinning, prescribed burning, seeding, noxious weed treatments and other projects will only improve Colorado as a home of superb elk country.”

In addition, Allen thanked Colorado’s RMEF volunteers who conducted fundraising projects at their banquets, through membership drives and other events to generate the funding. He also thanked volunteers and members around the nation for their dedication to conservation.

RMEF grants fund the following 2014 projects, listed by county:

Adams County—Provide Torstenson Family Endowment (TFE) funding to expand the range of shooting skill clinics with the purchase of four trap throwers and an eight-trap wireless controller for the Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) Novice Hunter Program where new hunters learn about hunting strategies, laws, regulations and how to safely handle shotguns in the field. The equipment will be located at CPW’s Barr Lake State Park in Brighton and Jackson Lake State Park in Orchard (also affects Morgan County); and co-sponsor the Colorado Wildlife Employees Protective Association sporting clays fundraiser to benefit the college funds for the three children of CPW Officer Jon Wangnild who passed away in 2013.

Chaffee County—Broadcast burn more than 4,000 acres at varying intensities to stimulate mountain mahogany sprouting and reduce pinyon-juniper invasion into grassland, dead and down fuels and duff layer on the San Isabel National Forest.

Denver County—Co-sponsor the Colorado Conservation Reception at the 79th Annual North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference in Denver; and RMEF volunteers host its Shooting Access for Everyone (SAFE) shooting inflatable at the Bass Pro Fall Hunting Clinic.

Dolores County—Burn 284 acres to increase grass and forb production and reduce fuels on high use elk and deer winter range as part a larger-scale effort to treat 25,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands in the Dolores River Canyon.

Eagle County—Thin 605 acres of pinyon-juniper encroachment into sagebrush habitat on BLM lands above the Colorado River near Burns to benefit multiple species particularly elk, mule deer and sage-grouse.

Garfield County—Install more than 8,000 feet of buried pipeline in the Garfield State Wildlife Area to provide irrigation water to six forage plots totaling nine acres on elk and deer crucial winter range in an effort to draw animals away from private agricultural lands.

Grand County—Provide funding for a Colorado Department of Transportation project to deploy motion-triggered cameras to help locate two future wildlife overpasses and five wildlife underpasses to help reduce vehicle-wildlife collisions on a 10.6-mile stretch of Highway 9 between Green Mountain Reservoir and the Colorado River near Kremmling where more than 450 wildlife documented mortalities took place in the winter months since 2005 (also affects Summit County); and provide funding for noxious weed treatments on 382 acres on the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest including the Beaver Park, Big Meadows, Cub Creek, Cole Creek Ponds, Cottonwood Pass, Cub Creek, Doe Creek Trail, Eightmile Creek, Horseshoe Trail, Morgan Gulch, Strawberry Bench Trail and Ute Pasture areas. The district has contracted backcountry weed treatments with RMEF since 2002.

Gunnison County—Conduct aggressive treatment of newly established cheatgrass via ATV and pack mule application on 555 acres of crucial winter range on the Almont Triangle and Flat Top area of the Gunnison National Forest, some of the most important winter range for elk in the Gunnison Basin; and install 25 GPS radio collars on elk on the Gunnison National Forest and BLM lands to determine habitat use, movement patterns to get better information so that decision makers can assess and respond to conflict “hot spots” as the Gunnison Basin continues to be impacted by development, grazing, hunting and changes in habitat over time (also affects Hinsdale and Saguache Counties).

LaPlata County—Apply noxious weed treatment with herbicide to 65 acres and 60 acres with biological control in Bonnell Canyon on the San Juan National Forest, an elk winter concentration and transition area 10 miles northeast of Bayfield (also affects Archuleta County).

Las Animas County—Remove conifers on 240 acres of oakbrush and mixed conifer forests to open canopy and improve forage production on the Bosque del Oso and Spanish Peaks State Wildlife Areas.

Mesa County— Mechanically treat 500 acres of pinyon-juniper and mountain shrub communities on the northwestern end of the Uncompahgre Plateau on the Uncompahgre National Forest in elk summer and winter concentration range (elk densities are 200% greater than the surrounding winter range) in the final phase of a three-year project that previously treated 296 acres; improve 520 acres of elk year-long and high concentration winter range on public lands south of Grand Junction with weed treatment, riparian restoration, and reseeding (also affects Delta and Montrose Counties); burn 1,000 acres across three adjacent burn units to create a mosaic of underburned and burned areas and further enhance forage in previously mechanically treated oak and mountain brush habitat as well as isolated aspen stands on the Uncompahgre Plateau of the Uncompahgre National Forest to benefit elk winter, summer and transition range, mule deer summer and transition range and winter range for Merriam’s turkey; RMEF volunteers host the SAFE shooting inflatable at Outdoor Heritage Day which provided educational and hands-on instruction in wildlife, outdoor and conservation education to youth ages 16 and under; and RMEF volunteers host the SAFE shooting inflatable at the 30th Annual Kite Day in Grand Junction.

Park County—Provide funding to purchase seed mix for application to 14 acres receiving brush hog treatment to remove decadent grass and potentilla along the Middle Fork of the South Platte River in the Tomahawk State Wildlife Area to increase forage for wintering elk; thin 60 acres of conifer encroachment in the James Mark Jones State Wildlife Area within declining aspen stands to stimulate suckering, reduce wildfire potential and to entice elk to stay and/or return to managed public lands; and improve 500 acres of riparian habitat on the Pike National Forest with a variety of techniques including weed treatment and seeding, water development outside the riparian zone, gully contouring, and felling of beetle-killed trees to create check dams to reduce erosion and make the area more difficult to access during recovery.

Pitkin County—Improve water delivery for irrigation system providing wildlife forage on the Basalt State Wildlife Area which is dedicated to winter wildlife including elk, deer and bighorn sheep.

Rio Blanco County—Treat 350 acres of residual and new noxious weed infestations within the Flat Tops Wilderness, Pagoda Roadless Area and in the Morrison Creek drainage including the Bushy Creek Roadless Area on the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest as part of an ongoing effort to maintain high quality browse on elk summer, winter and calving range (also affects Routt, Grand and Garfield Counties); and provide funding to update monitoring technology, replacing existing sample set of VHS collars with satellite/GPS collars and adding more collars with a project goal to evaluate big game use and distribution relative to habitat enhancement activities to help develop long-term priorities for landscape scale habitat management actions for the Bears Ears and White River elk herds (also affects Moffat and Routt Counties).

Routt County—Improve the Mad Creek elk winter range by treating 50 acres of weed infestations with backpack and ATV sprayers as part of a ten-year effort on the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest.

Saguache County—Rip and seed ten road miles and place barriers to provide habitat security on the Gunnison National Forest, keep big game on public land and prevent early movement to private land and improve hunting and wildlife viewing opportunities in an area comprised of calving grounds for elk and moose, and fawning areas for deer and pronghorn.

Teller County—RMEF volunteers host the SAFE shooting inflatable at CPW’s annual family Outdoor Skills Day sponsored which provided instruction regarding shooting, archery, fishing, mountain biking, geocaching and living and playing in bear country.

Statewide—Sponsor Country Jam USA Military Day in Grand Junction in June of 2014.

Conservation projects are selected for grants using science-based criteria and a committee of RMEF volunteers and staff along with representatives from partnering agencies and universities. RMEF volunteers and staff select hunting heritage projects to receive funding.

Since 1985, RMEF and its partners have completed 637 different conservation and hunting heritage outreach projects in Colorado with a combined value of more than $154.1 million.

Partners for the Colorado projects include Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Bureau of Land Management, and the Arapaho-Roosevelt, Grand Mesa, Gunnison, Medicine Bow-Routt, Pike, San Isabel, San Juan and Uncompahgre National Forests as well as local businesses, universities and various sportsmen, wildlife, civic and government organizations.

AUGUSTA, Maine – With Maine’s bear management program the subject of a statewide referendum, Mainers are hearing a lot about Colorado, Oregon, Washington and Massachusetts, four states that have passed similar measures.

After similar referendums passed in these states, generally these states have has seen an increase in the bear population, an increase in the number of nuisance complaints, an increase in the number of nuisance bears killed and an increased cost to the public as a result of expanding bear populations. Voters in Massachusetts, Colorado, Washington and Oregon banned bear hunting with bait and hounds from 1992 to 1996.

In Massachusetts, the bear population has increased seven-fold and bear conflicts have increased by 500 percent. Wayne MacCallum, director of the state’s Department of Fish and Game’s Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, described the situation in an August 24 article in the Portland Press Herald: “(The bear population) is expanding eastward,” he said. “Every year now there are an increasing number of juvenile bears in metropolitan Boston. I suspect if we can’t harvest significantly more, the population will continue to increase.”

He went on to state that “there are constant complaints about bear encounters. We are constantly moving bears. It’s kind of like shoveling sand against the tide. This is the largest bear population in the state for at least 200 years. The fact of the matter is, at some point you will just have so many bears that people won’t tolerate them.”

In Colorado, more than 350 bears are killed each year in response to conflicts. Many towns have passed ordinances that regulate how residents can store their garbage and when it can be placed for curbside pickup, with fines ranging up to $1,000. One Colorado county even banned levered door handles on new houses because home entries by bears are so common.

In some Colorado towns, bear complaints are the number-one call received by police departments. When asked what impact a similar ban would have on Maine’s bear management program, Colorado bear biologist Jerry Apker recently said, “I think it would tremendously complicate how the State has to approach managing bears in Maine.”

In Oregon and Washington, biologists have struggled to prevent property damage by bears since the referendum passed, and those states now allow private landowners and deputized agents to kill bears using bait, hounds and traps in unlimited numbers.

Despite this, bears cause an estimated $16 million in damage to the timber industry each year by stripping the bark from young trees. Donny Martorello, the Carnivore Section Manager with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, recently told 92.9 Radio Host Bob Duchesne that before the referendum, “we were able to use recreational hunters at a very low cost and through time (that) was working well.” While he respects the rights of voters to pass a citizen initiative, he went on to say that “having that full toolbox of ways to manage the resource is something we’d like to see.”

In Maine, bait, hounds, and traps account for 93 percent of our annual bear harvest. Maine is the most forested state in the country, and our woods have a thick understory, which makes still-hunting extremely difficult. The loss of bait, hounds and traps for bear hunting will have a much larger impact on Maine’s bear management program than it has in other states.

In addition, Maine has very few options to increase participation by bear hunters if the referendum passes. The state already has a 14-week hunting season that starts in late August and ends after bears have entered their dens. Bear hunting licenses are already available in unlimited numbers, and a spring hunting season is prohibited by legislation.

During the firearms season on deer, all Maine residents are already allowed to hunt bears without having to purchase a separate bear license. Since Maine won’t be able to offset a reduction in the bear harvest by increasing hunter numbers or season length, if the referendum passes we expect the bear harvest to decline dramatically. This will result in a rapidly increasing bear population that expands into the more populated areas of Maine, causing more conflicts with people.

Even though each of these states is very different from Maine in several ways, it is informative to understand how their bear management programs have evolved over time. Maine’s bear biologists discussed each state’s bear management programs and hunting methods with the biologists in these states. As a result, Maine’s biologists are more convinced than ever that a ban on bear hunting with bait, hounds and traps will be bad for Maine.

In all of these states that passed similar referendums, bait and hounds were responsible for a relatively small portion of the annual bear harvest because the open habitats make other hunting methods, like spot and stalk, more effective. Therefore, it was possible for the fish and wildlife agencies to partially offset the decline in the bear harvest that occurred after the referendums passed.

In some states, bear tags were included in a package with other big game licenses, so that virtually all hunters could shoot a bear if they saw it. The rise in bear hunter numbers was due to changes in how hunting licenses were administered, rather than an actual increase in interest in bear hunting (e.g. all big game hunters receive a bear tag and then are counted as bear hunters whether they actually pursue bears or not). Even with these changes, each of the harvests in these states is less than half the number of bears that need to be taken in Maine each year to control the population.

Maine is fortunate to have one of the largest bear populations in the country. We have very few conflicts between people and bears, and those that do occur are generally not severe. Fewer than a dozen bears are killed each year to protect property or public safety. Our bear management program is based on 40 years of research and is highly regarded by biologists across the country.

Leaving bear management in the capable hands of Maine’s biologists and game wardens will ensure that bears retain their stature as one of our state’s most treasured resources.

Further proof that Americans are living in a totalitarian socialist state and that animals are more important than people and the lifestyles they choose to live, people cry out for more control over humans so animals can be protected at all costs.

In Colorado, bears are a problem. This year it is being blamed on a shortage of natural food. However, authorities admit there are too many bears…period. If we lived in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave, we’d go kill some bears and bring the population back down to manageable levels for public health and safety. But that doesn’t fly with the totalitarians who hate rural America, the heritage that goes with it and the common sense of letting people protect their property and safety. This is insanity in full force.

In Glenwood Springs, Colorado totalitarians are calling for further restrictions on humans. No that’s not a misprint. I said humans. Because there are too many bears, fines should be levied against anyone who allows a bear to come on their property looking for food. If the homeowner isn’t complying with all the ridiculous gestapoesque regulations, they get fined. Humans must seriously alter their lifestyles and pay fines to protect an animal species that authorities say there are too many of them. How does any of this make sense?

Evidently the program that city officials implemented isn’t working out so some are suggesting turning enforcement over to the police department.

Hey, idiots. You have a bear problem. Why don’t you just run the people out of town or force them into intern camps and let the bears have their way? That is your goal isn’t it?

One city council member suggested that what should be done is a repeal of the bear hunting ban. I’m sure that will not go over well because totalitarian idiots love their bears.

And all the while this is going on, in Maine, the Humane Society of the United States is allow to lie through their teeth about what is going on in states like Colorado that banned bear hunting like these fascists want to do in Maine. HSUS goes unchallenged. HSUS has filed a lawsuit in Maine to stop the fish and game department from opposing the referendum, saying it’s unethical. How about a counter lawsuit to stop HSUS from lying repeatedly. Oh, yeah. I forgot. Lying is readily acceptable these days. The end justifies the means.

So long as we continue on down the road of mythology, that we NEED “reasonable” regulations and restrictions, compromising our existence for the sake of animals, there is little hope.

Nothing to see here. Move on. More important things to be seen on your smart phones and eyepads.

“Apker said a bear population much greater than expected, combined with an explosion in Colorado’s human population over the last decade, means people living even in cities have good chances of encountering bears.

That means people must learn to tolerate some human-bear conflicts and learn to minimize or reduce the things that cause them, he said. Wildlife managers will be talking with communities about how many bears they want and how to achieve those goals using methods like hunting.

“We do sometimes have to make a decision,” Apker said. “Is this the number of bears that we’re comfortable with?””<<<Read More>>>